But there was something. Something they had begun to be more than remotely aware of. One of those shadows one shies at, one of those bridges one will not walk over. A thing like that, full of menace, which the riders usually do not understand. Most of them. The woman, she understood. She always understood. If there was a thing like that, she never insisted. Never. And in return, each gave her total trust. When she rode them at the high fence, the fence one could not see over, with no knowledge at all of what might be beyond, each one trusted that she would bring them safely down on the other side. They knew it as trust. She would not betray them, not one of them.
Not that they thought in words. They did not have the words. It was more an understanding of the way things were. The rewards, the threats. That thing out there on the ridge that day. This noise, moving in the night, this noise that tried to crawl into ears, into heads, to take over everything. These were threats.
But there was something else abroad in the night, and that … that was something they could not identify as either a threat or a reward. It fought against the horrid noise; it kept the insinuating thoughts away. And yet, it came no closer, it offered no hay, it stroked no necks. It was simply there, like a breathing wall, a thing they did not understand at all.
So the whicker ran, left to right, then back again. “Here. Still here. All right. Still alive. Nothing…”
“Nothing yet.”
Jandra Jellico did as she had threatened and went over to Portside in her half-person to visit with Ducky Johns. She’d met Ducky before and quite liked her, despite the business she was in, which Jandra didn’t altogether approve of. Pleasure was pleasure, had been for ages, and people would seek it out. Some of the ways they sought it, though, in Jandra’s opinion, were not quite tasteful.
Still, she made nothing of that as she sat in Ducky Johns’ private parlor, sipping tea and staring at the girl who sat on the carpet, humming to herself. Itself. Whatever. When the girl got an itch, up came the skirt and the hand scratched, wherever the itch might be. No inhibitions at all, no more than a cat, licking itself where it needed it.
“My, my,” Jandra said. “You can’t keep her here, Ducky.”
“Well, and who wanted to?” Ducky sulked, waving her tiny hands in circles to express innocent annoyance. “It was Jelly, your own Jelly, made me bring her back here. She’s useless to me, dear. Can’t sell her. Who’d want her? Needs to be trained before she’s any use at all.”
“Does she potty?” Jandra wanted to know.
“Except for eating, that’s all she does, but potty she does. Like my wallo-pup, whines when she needs to go.”
“Have you tried—“
“Haven’t tried anything at all. No time. This business keeps me at it, day on day. No time for fooling with that!” The little hands waved again, then folded themselves into an obdurate lump buried deep in Ducky’s lap. “Tell me you’ll take her away, Jandra. Do say so. Anyone else, your Jelly would argue.”
“Oh, I’ll take her,” Jandra agreed. “Or send for her, rather. But it’s, the strangest thing. The very strangest thing. Where’d she come from?”
“Wouldn’t we like to know that, my dear? Wouldn’t we all?”
Jandra sent for the girl that afternoon. Thereafter she spent a good part of several days teaching the girl to keep her skirts down and to eat with her fingers instead of burying her face in the food and to go potty by herself without whining. When she’d done that much, she called Kinny Few on the tell-me and invited her over, and the two of them sipped tea and nibbled at Kinny’s seed cakes while they watched the girl playing with a ball on the floor.
“I thought you might know who she is,” Jandra said. “Or who she was. Surely she hasn’t always been like this.”
Kinny thought hard about it. There was something in the tilt of the girl’s head that reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t say who. No one in Commons, that was certain. “She must have come in on a ship,” she offered, having already been told that this was impossible. “Must have.”